and what seemed inner nothingness was the fertilisation of seed, slow embryonic sprouting, if not cleansing, if not, splattering of sleet or mud where seeds fell anyway, sucking up the drink thirstily and life thrived.

Welcome back Kilsey, good to hear u had a lovely time with the girls and breathed in the fresh air of Sveden. I really enjoyed watching the vids of you and Marty performing over there, just like old times 🙂
It’s dark, cold, wet and windy here too, you’re not alone!

Any plans to play a gig or two in Melby would be nice (as long as it’s not between (July-mid August!), we miss ya!

‘these questions interposed on some inner nothingness…’ Love the precipitous feeling of this line; that sense of being on the edge of falling into either a truth, a revelation or a vortex…the zone where comfort and ease are gone and the bare truth is just in front of us.

The poet ventures to speak, not because speech is adequate but because it is a necessary moment in the continuing struggle for meaning. You stake a position not because it is right, but because staking a position is the only way to enter into the process of learning and growth. This process is obscurely redemptive, since our failure and defeat drive us into a stance of deeper commitment to the world.~Rowan Williams. Thankyou for your deep commitment to the world, Steve.

A sadness that
takes its place
just behind the sternum
and takes root there
and throbs like tetanus
the infected rose-thorn jab
a leaden mercury shade
if I were to paint it
or a slash down through the
neck and across the heart
and into the stomach
where it settles its blade
and slowly twists and turns
still
then moving again
the plain girl
alone
eating her lunch at school
in the corner of the yard
savouring each bite
of her ordinary sandwich
her loneliness so palpable
I could reach out and touch
it and feel its moist veil
a child’s empty cot occupied yesterday
the old man watering his
tired rose bushes in
stained brown trousers
in need of a wash
the trousers and him
his house needing paint
and laughter and the silvery
trickle of distant conversation
flowing between the rooms
and out into the night
I weep deep convulsing sobs
that reform the sadness
from diffused mist
back into soaking rain
that falls and falls and falls

Pity me not thinks the lonely girl with pity as others look on, embuing her with the shroud around her. She assumes it to trick them so she can half joke to herself. Really, it has nothing to do with anything they think. It is simply a need to create some space in her own place. There is no room for her at the inn, for she is a her not a him. Yet the sandwich is not plain or perhaps it is plainer than plain. I mean no one else at that time or place except for new Australians ate brown bread and cheddar. Ironically those earthlings ate nothing but fairy bread… Then, when she felt lonely, she knew she was really not. God was with her whether she wanted it or not. She had to be grateful some days. Well, at the end of the year, she won the religion prize which surprised her but no one else. Just like she was surprised to have so many friends who were boys when others said she was ugly. But there it was… perhaps the nun saw an aura outside the ordinary. Or perhaps the nun was lying as those ladies say, just like the ‘lonely’ girl self doubted whenever she attempted the truth. Yet, though she disliked self righteousness, she could not help but see how wrong were the nongs. And how secretly smug she felt being younger than them. Their dumbness was plain to see, as plain as me she thought. Though is plain really an accurate description of me? She half bought the ugly thing and half the opposite and admitted to herself some superiority in spite of or perhaps because of not being chocolate boxed. Also refusing to be and just unable to be anyway.